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Former Mexican president Vicente Fox has all but called Trump a fascist — and used another “f-word” for his proposed border wall.

Historian Fedja Buric compared him with founding fascist Benito Mussolini. And New Republic editor Jamil Smith said it straight out: “yes, Donald Trump is a fascist.”

Trump even went too far for tub-thumping far right radio host Glenn Beck, who lumped him with “Adolph Hitler in 1929,” on ABC-TV.

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But those who have made an academic study of fascism say although Trump and his Coalition of the Chilling may share some of the characteristics of past fascists, the jaw-jutting reality star doesn’t quite squeeze into the classic 20th-century mould.

The issue isn’t merely of interest to academics or tabloids. For although Trump may so far fall short of a strict definition of fascism, his frequent switchbacks, unpredictable policy lurches and apparent fondness for violence leave serious questions about the direction he might take his campaign, and the country.

“We’re all eager to explain him,” says historian David Greenberg of Rutgers University. “But the phenomenon will look very different if he wins, loses heavily in the fall, or doesn’t get the nomination. We don’t know how this movie ends.”

Roots of fascism

Some analysts rule out direct comparisons with the past.

“Trump is fundamentally a blustering political opportunist courting votes in a democratic system,” argues Gianni Riotta of Princeton University’s French and Italian department, who grew up in a country that was still in Mussolini’s shadow.

“(Trump) has not called for the violent overthrow of the system itself,” he wrote in the Atlantic. “The fascists who marched on Rome in 1922 were relentlessly, violently focused on a clear goal: to kill democracy and install a dictatorship.”

Mussolini himself — known as the father of fascism — was a practitioner of political opportunism who switched from ardent socialist and worker’s advocate to repressive anti-socialist, ally of wealthy capitalists and the Catholic Church.

He came to power through military muscle and political manoeuvring and made himself the supreme strongman of a nation seething with discontent and laid low by war, poverty and unemployment.

Although Trump may share some of Mussolini’s pretentions, says Kevin Passmore of Cardiff University, author of Fascism: A Very Short Introduction, it does his critics no favours to apply the label that is the linguistic equivalent of the nuclear option.

“Fascism is the ultimate insult,” he says. “The problem is that if you obsess over the term you can easily miss the importance of what is actually happening now. Trump doesn’t have to be a classic fascist to be dangerous.”

Donald Trump supporter Birgitt Peterson infamously made a Nazi salute while arguing with protesters at a cancelled Trump rally in Chicago in March. Peterson, who was born in West Berlin in 1946, later told the New York Times she made the gesture to criticize protesters who were comparing Trump to Adolf Hitler. “Absolutely I’m not a Nazi, no,” she said, adding: “We have never done anything other than demonstrate to a bunch of idiots that when they talk about Nazism, they better learn about it first.” (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)

Individual vs. nation

One of fascism’s main goals is an ironhanded, all-controlling state that reaches into citizens’ private lives, the opposite of Trump’s individualistic rhetoric.

Trump’s blaring views on immigrants, Muslims, Hispanics, Mexicans, women and violence against dissidents are similar enough to fascism to send shock waves through a Republican party that has tried to keep them sotto voce. But Mussolini’s rants were amped up by a strident Italian fascist party.

Fascism opposed individualism in favour of the national interest, and supported the kind of military expansionism that Trump recently told the Washington Post he rejects, in spite of promises to “make America great again.” He claims to favour downsizing U.S. military presence overseas and reviving an isolationism that appeals to libertarians as well as pacifists.

But even in its heyday, in the 1920s to 1940s, fascism was a slippery term to define, representing a grab-bag of often competing interests.

“Even fascists couldn’t agree on who is fascist,” Passmore says. Some avowed fascists identified with the free market, others trade unions. Corporations and businesses embraced fascism but opposed state control. Monarchists were in the fascist fold, but paid homage to Il Duce.

The scene was further complicated by the rise of Adolph Hitler and German Nazism — a term often used interchangeably with fascism, but with differences as well as similarities. Hitler’s Third Reich was a predominantly racist state that personified ethnic cleansing.

Trump’s rhetoric has echoes of fascism — but springs from expediency rather than ideology, says Columbia University historian Robert Paxton, a leading chronicler of fascism.

“Superficially he seems to have borrowed a number of fascist themes,” he writes in Project Syndicate. “Xenophobia, racial prejudice, fear of national weakness and decline,” as well as “readiness to suspend the rule of law to deal with supposed emergencies.”

But he adds, in spite of Trump’s “hectoring tone,” his qualities are “at most derivative of fascist themes and styles; the underlying ideological substance is very different, with the entitlements of wealth playing a greater role than fascist regimes generally tolerated.”

The perils of Trumpism

If Donald Trump isn’t a classic fascist, should we all just relax and enjoy the wild ride?

The chorus of “nos” rings louder by the day, as Trump claws his way up the political ladder to the July Republican leadership convention. And the voices are resounding across the political spectrum.

“The argument about whether Trump is a fascist or not is really a diversion,” says Henry Giroux of McMaster University, author of America at War With Itself. “He is an authoritarian who terribly threatens democracy.”

He adds, “Trump is the result of a long series of attacks on democracy, and now the real divide is between those who do and don’t believe in democracy.”

The U.S. has a complex political system, and has so far avoided the violent demagoguery that overran Europe in the 20th century. But the authoritarian vein runs deep in the American body politic, and can quickly rise to the surface, warned Sinclair Lewis in his eerily prophetic 1935 novel It Can’t Happen HereIt Can’t Happen Here.

In it, a charismatic populist politician wins the presidency on promises of making America great and by taking advantage of public disillusionment and anger against government. It doesn’t end well: the plutocrats take over in a reign of fascist-style racism, repression, fear and violence.

“Trump takes you partway toward fascism by playing on xenophobia and race hatred, its cardinal elements,” says Todd Gitlin, a Columbia University professor of journalism and sociology.

“There is a lot of nativist feeling today, and I can imagine circumstances in which a sense of wild panic grows and Trump drives people wilder. A big terror attack, another economic meltdown. Growing race friction from incidents leading to black riots or white recoil.”

With a number of Trump supporters “devoted to guns,” Gitlin says, “I could imagine armed confrontations.”

“When I started watching old films of Mussolini rallies I saw a lot of dangerous echoes,” warns historian Fedja Buric of Bellarmine University in Kentucky. “No. 1 is dismissiveness of democratic institutions, with promises made not on policy but personality. Trump’s machismo appeals to angry white men.

“Second, he stokes racial animosity and calls for violence. He can’t go as far as Mussolini, because in America he’d be arrested. But there’s the same rhetoric about making the country great again.”

Is Trump exaggerating?

How far a President Trump would go in office is still a moot point. Some supporters scoff at his public rhetoric as strategic blanks fired by a shrewd deal-maker who is targeting only votes.

His lack of coherent policy has kept analysts scratching their heads over his real intentions.

“I would say he has authoritarian qualities,” says David Greenberg of Rutgers University, author of Republic of SpinRepublic of Spin. “But I don’t think he would brazenly defy the law and the constitution in using the power of government to punish enemies. We flirted with that in (President Richard) Nixon. But Trump hasn’t shown himself at that level.”

Nevertheless, a spark once ignited has unpredictable consequences, especially in the dry tinder of a country that has lost faith in the much-touted American Dream and is looking for someone to punish for it.

“Not surprisingly, Mr. Trump’s politics of hate is now metastasizing into violence,” says Peter Wehner, a veteran of three Republican administrations.

“On social media in particular, one sees how he gives his supporters permission to express dark and ugly sentiments that existed before but were generally kept hidden from view,” he wrote in the New York Times.

A strongman stalks

But says Giroux, the Republican party’s extremists have quietly fanned the flames and the party is now afraid that the house will burn down. Nor will the danger go away if Trump is defeated.

“Trump is about a number of things that have been present in the party for 30 years. Islamophobia, resentment of Mexicans, an appeal to the past that is romanticized in white nationalist terms.

“Massive inequalities of wealth have left many angry and powerless. A culture of fear has created enormous mistrust and sense of vulnerability. Democratic education has failed. And there’s a sense of radical individualism that makes it impossible to translate personal into public issues.”

Although Trump’s rise is “painful” to some Republicans, says Wehner, his high-profile support within the party makes things even worse.

America’s founders devised a system that has kept authoritarian leaders from power, he points out.

But “we have never before faced the prospect of a political strongman becoming president. Until now.”

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